Very big news – Google has released new featured content in the popular Google Earth program that includes the mountaintop removal coal mining layer at the heart of www.iLoveMountains.org. The new featured content, which can be seen and explored by all 200 million users of Google Earth worldwide, includes the National Memorial for the Mountains, which uses Google Earth satellite imagery to reveal the devastating impacts of mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachian Mountains.

To learn more, read the press release below, and check out the post on the official Google Blog. by Mary Anne Hitt, executive director of Appalachian Voices. In the post, Hitt writes,

The first time I flew over southern West Virginia and saw mountaintop removal coal mining from the air, I knew that if everyone could see what I had seen – mountain after mountain blown up and then dumped into streams in the neighboring valleys – they would think twice about where their electricity came from the next time they flipped a light switch.

“Now it’s your turn to fly over the region.”

To view the mountaintop removal layer in the new featured content for Google Earth (available for free download), go to the “Layers” sidebar in Google Earth, on the left-hand side of the screen. In the “Featured Content” folder, look for “Appalachian Mountaintop Removal” in the “Global Awareness” folder. More detailed instructions are available on the iLoveMountains Memorial page, where you can also download the full-featured version of the Memorial.